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Awesome Stories 307

This week Awesome Stories brings you floating cities, peace, beautiful business, and music for change.

Floating Cities

Blue21 is a social design company that wants to help inspire and empower cities to expand onto the water. They believe communities on water might be our best hope for dealing with climate change challenges and are focused on building partnerships, awareness, and research. Their Floating Pavilion project in Rotterdam was a pilot for floating development, demonstrating safe, sustainable and climate proof opportunities. French Polynesia has recently signed a historic agreement that will allow for the development of the first floating city in a lagoon off the island of Tahiti.

Good Morning, Beautiful Business

I envision global economy as an intricate network of small-to-small, win-win business relationships connecting communities that are self-reliant for their basic needs. ~ Judy Wicks

Judy Wick is the founder of Philadelphia’s landmark White Dog Café known for its leadership in the local food movement. I love this article by Judy so much so that I’ve ordered her book Good Morning, Beautiful Business. I would love to find a business that works like Judy ran her businesses, utilizing my skills to improve the lives of community and planet. Judy’s idea is that we need to transform that way we do business from our current models dominated by large corporations seeking profit first to local businesses building resiliency and community. In Judy’s words, her book reflects a deep love of business, and how we can embrace a way of doing business that is beautiful and nurtures all that we cherish.

Playing for Change

Playing for Change uses music to bring together people from around the world to help make the world a better place. The idea is to use music to build bridges of love, peace, trust, and collaboration. Here’s a beautiful song they recently released as a tribute to Michael Jackson called Heal the World. I know music often stirs and soothes my soul and I’m glad to see it used consciously as a tool to build bridges. Kudos!

Peace for 2017

Tracy Cochran has a great idea for bringing more peace into our lives for 2017. Tracy suggests that we start the year with a forgiveness practice as a way of clearing our minds and hearts to make room for more peace. She suggests that anytime we feel a tug of anxiety, guilt, blame or other regretful energies, we pause and say “forgiven” as a ritual way to let go of the pain, ease our minds and allows ourselves to sink deeper into our hearts or seat of inner being. Tracy compares forgiveness to putting down our arms during war and becoming vulnerable. When we open ourselves to the unknown, we embrace the larger potentials in life.

May we forgive, let go, and open to more peace and love for 2017. Blessings, Brad

I had first discovered Play for Change in 2009 when I was doing an all-school assembly for the International Day of Peace. Their song, “Stand By Me” blew me away. So glad to see they’re still going strong. 🙂
As for the floating cities: this sounds like an intriguing idea. What do they say about the impact on the ocean itself, do you know? Just curious. I suppose everything we do has some sort of impact.
Awesome post of awesome stories, as always. 🙂

Thanks Cynthia. I love how PFC uses music for bringing to people. I don’t know about the impact of these floating cities on the water. I believe the intention is to purify water/ waste so that they enhance the environment.

This weeks offering was as awesome as ever, Brad! The floating city experiment in French Polynesia shall be interesting to follow. And Playing for Change is one of my absolute favorites, I’ve followed them since the kick-off ❤

I do enjoy reading your blog….the articles you choose are always so positive. These three definitely fall into that category. I love the idea of floating cities….and Judy’s business concept. We definitely need to look at different ways of doing things….and as always bringing the creative process into our thinking.

I love that you do this….and I can assure you that you do inspire and remind me for one, that every day is a new and exciting opportunity to make a positive difference, no matter how small it might seem to be. Enjoy the weekend…Janet. 🙂

Great choices especially since all that rain.. So I liked the idea of floating cities.. I am sure it will have to be thought about at some point in the not too distant future too Brad.. We also had our own ‘weather bomb’ here in Storm Doris.. Thankfully we had not damage.. but many did. xxx Wishing you a good weekend Brad xx

We’re having the opposite weather; extremely warm and dry. We don’t have to worry about floating cities, but most of the world lives near water and floating cities seem like a great option. I’m glad you weren’t harmed by the storm. To resiliency and living in harmony with nature.